


every second newlywed

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 06:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20810681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: Sammy stays on their couch that night – and more nights after that, once the school year starts and they all attach themselves again. They sit closer when they watch TV, Jack pulls Sammy’s hair out of his face, Sammy rubs Jack’s shoulder when it aches, and they hug, even when they’re out in public. They hug in greeting – they hug goodbye. It’s nice, touching someone without being afraid.[Touch, through the years.]





	every second newlywed

**Author's Note:**

> oh my GOD I need to write fic more for my mental health.
> 
> I've wanted to write for so long but I've been so exhausted and had so much personal shit going on, and I missed my fic-writing outlet so much. I might have to make myself write fic at least every other weekend so I don't explode. I wrote this all today because I instituted a day off from everything else, and I'm so glad I did it.
> 
> This is super unedited because I don't have the time but I hope you like it anyway! If I don't project onto Sammy Stevens I'll die so hopefully I'll post more in the coming weeks, but no promises

**1.**

Jack knows, on an intellectual level, that he’s gay.

At age eighteen, he’s yet to apply that fact to the reality that exists outside of his brain. His attraction to guys is on a very low volume in the back of his brain, and he doesn’t allow himself to try to search for a metaphorical remote to make it stronger. He’s perfectly fine with being gay only in the confines of his mind and never letting it out or even considering it with too much weight.

He’s never going to date a girl again, but he equally can’t picture himself with a boy, at least not right now. Maybe, in some nebulous future, if everything slots perfectly into place.

Jack refuses to spend any time thinking about that.

Instead he thinks about his five classes, his tech help desk job, his annoying roommates, his obnoxious older sister, and the friend he made in his writing and reporting class.

Sammy’s in three of his classes, actually. Everything on Monday and Wednesday, from nine to three. Jack doesn’t know if Sammy would’ve come up to talk to him otherwise, but they get in the habit of walking across campus together. They’re going to the same places, anyway.

It makes sense for them to study together afterwards, with so much of their schedule in common. And Sammy’s a local, unlike Jack, so it also makes sense for Sammy to show him around the city. Sammy takes Jack to a record store one weekend, hair falling in his face as he blushed. Sammy’s private and a little shy, but in the record shop he goes on about his favorite bands and the importance of vinyl for almost forty-five minutes.

It makes sense for Jack to invite Sammy over to Lily’s apartment to smoke, too. It makes sense that Lily likes Sammy – who wouldn’t like Sammy? The three of them sit on the floor of her living room, and Sammy really starts to talk for the first time.

“I just – I’ve lived here all my life. It’s such a shit show,” Sammy stares somewhere past Jack’s eyes, his voice soft and almost melancholic. “Nothing interesting ever happens. Nothing meaningful. All I’ve ever wanted to do was escape, but of course I couldn’t afford to go to school anywhere else. I had to fight tooth and nail to even convince my parents that I can live on-campus. They didn’t want me to come to school at all. Wanted me to get a fucking – I don’t know, retail job. Stay there for the rest of my life. Stay _here. _I’d rather just die now.”

Sammy’s voice heats with conviction, even as his arm falls lax at his side. He squints like it had been painful to get the words out, or perhaps embarrassing.

Jack should put a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. He _wants _to put on a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. For comfort, for solidarity. Because Sammy’s his friend and Jack sympathizes.

Jack’s arm stays firmly at his side.

“That fucking blows,” Lily says, eloquent as she ever is when she’s high, and then laughs. Jack is worried Sammy will be offended, but Sammy just laughs along with her, tired but commiserating.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says quietly, then trades a quick look with Lily to say _can I? _She nods. “We moved around a lot all our lives. Dad’s in the army. Wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He doesn’t get the whole journalism thing, for either of us.”

“Dad’s always been a dick,” Lily says mildly, and Jack can feel how they’re not mentioning a recent screaming match between the two of them. It’s not time for that yet. Maybe ever. “Where we come from doesn’t matter. Where we’re going _does.”_

“To anywhere but here,” Sammy raises his joint as if it’s a toast, blushing a little as Jack mimics him. Jack wants to lean closer when he notices Sammy’s still frowning, but he doesn’t. He stays where he is.

He stays where he is for most of the next year. He and Sammy spend two or three days a week together, and a night with Lily on the weekends, getting high and arguing over what to watch on cable. Lily almost always wins, and turns to the channel that’s always planning Xena reruns.

They talk about hopes and dreams and ambitions and everything teenagers want to be someday. They talk about leaving the storied American South and setting off on some adventure. Jack knows that when Sammy and Lily think of adventure, they think of New York City or Los Angeles. Jack thinks about the great outdoors, and fantasy novels, and monsters at the bottom of the ocean. They don’t have to know that, though. Jack can just talk about the dreams he shares with them. It’s not like he’d ever say no to New York City, especially from his position now in muggy Florida.

Their father always called Jack and Lily too ambitious for their own good, and that’s why they never had any friends other than each other. He could be scathing. Jack tries not to blame him too much for it. Sammy is the first person who can keep up with them, who can understand their weird passive aggressive sibling language despite having no siblings himself.

_I’m like the Wright translator, _Sammy joked once. _Since no one else understands what the fuck you two are saying._

Xena marathons populate their freshmen year, occaisionally interspersed with Jack’s picks of the Twilight Zone and the X-Files, and Sammy’s pick of Seinfeld, which gets him teased for hours. Sammy and Jack sit on the same couch, opposite sides. Once, Sammy shoves Jack with his foot when he’s making fun of him about something or other, and a warm sensation spreads from Jack’s chest to his fingertips.

He doesn’t analyze it too much, but he keeps stealing glances at Sammy for the rest of the night to see if he felt anything, too. Sammy stays in place, curled up on the other side of the couch, eyes crinkling up with laughter as he ribs Lily about a bad grade.

He notices Jack looking, and grins over at him. Hazel eyes and crooked teeth.

Jack still feels warm.

Sammy never spends the night at Lily’s, even though Jack sleeps at Lily’s just as often as he does his own dorm room. Jack's roommate smells perpetually of Doritos, so heavoids the room whenever possible. Sammy once came over to study, only to wrinkle his nose and start making retching noises.

Jack knows Sammy’s roommate is just as unpleasant, and Jack tells him a few times that he can just stay over, he’ll go invade Lily’s room so Sammy can have the couch.

“No, that’s okay,” Sammy says in the doorway one night, shaking his head. Lily’s snores can be heard across the apartment. “We’ll both sleep better if I go.”

“You’re probably right,” Jack keeps his tone light purposefully, and wonders why this matters so much to him. His heart pounds loud enough that he can hear it. “Are you busy tomorrow?”

Sammy shifts from one foot to another, and rubs the back of his neck. “Um, not really, but – I don’t think I can come over.”

An awful dread settles somewhere in the air around Jack. “Oh. I – that’s alright, but – okay, I’ll just see you –”

“Did I – shit, I’m sorry,” Sammy screws his face into a pained expression. “I just mean – I need a day to myself? You guys are great, but I just need a day. Homework and whatever. I – you get it, right? I mean, you barely talked to us tonight, you were so into your book….”

“I’m sorry,” Jack realizes that maybe this whole awkward mess is entirely his fault, and it makes his stomach clench painfully. “I didn’t even realize. I just –”

It was nice, Jack thought. Reading but still hearing Sammy and Lily bickering next to him. Jack’s good at focusing on more than one thing at a time, he thought he’d been at least involved in the conversation.

“It’s fine,” Sammy says, firm and Jack hopes that’s affection that he can hear in his voice. “I’m just gonna go, though. I’ll see you Monday?”

“See you,” Jack says, and Sammy smiles, fleeting and nervous, before the door closes between them.

Jack wishes that he’d reached out to touch Sammy, as if that would have reassured him somehow. Communicated that Jack was sorry and wanted him to stay, always wanted him around.

Things go back to normal a week later, and Jack doesn’t reach for his book once when Sammy’s over after that.

He still can’t help but wish – something.

**2.**

Their mom wants Jack and Lily home for the summer, fresh off the divorce, and neither of them feels like they can say no. Lily waitresses at a restaurant down the street from their Mom’s new condo. Jack works twelve hour days at a construction company so as not to witness the knockout fights that Lily and their mom eventually start instigating. 

He calls Sammy most nights when he gets home, exhausted but wanting to hear his voice. Sammy’s still in Florida, working a horrific detail as a cashier at Publix. He and Jack trade horror stories from work, and Jack tells Sammy he misses him at the end of every phone call.

Sammy never says it first, but he always replies _Hey, I miss you, too, but at least you got out of Florida._

Jack and Lily make the long haul back to Florida a week before classes start, and Sammy comes to help them move into Jack and Lily’s new apartment.

Sammy’s already moved into his apartment, has been since June, with three guys he knew vaguely from high school. Jack regrets that the timing didn’t work out well enough to find a three bedroom instead of a two bedroom so he could share with him and Lily, but he doesn’t say anything like that to Sammy.

“You’re distinctly unhelpful,” Lily informs Sammy snidely as they dump the rest of the boxes in Jack’s room. Jack always grabbed the heaviest things, and sometimes Sammy would help if he needed another pair of hands, but Sammy mostly contented himself with carrying in Lily’s thirteen thousand pillows.

“Big words for a girl who has a Minnie Mouse body pillow,” Sammy hugs said pillow to his chest with a satisfied smirk as Lily tries to tackle him. Jack has to pull her off, giggling. 

They end up ordering pizza and discussing their schedules – Lily’s a year ahead of them, and therefore she and Sammy are only sharing their accursed math requirement together, but Sammy and Jack have all of their journalism classes in common. They organized it that way last spring on purpose.

“C’mon, you have to have done _something _interesting this summer,” Lily begs Sammy, tugging on his shaggy hair. Sammy shoves her to the side, and Jack feels a quiet spike of jealousy that Lily and Sammy touch like that. Jack can’t imagine tugging Sammy’s hair for any reason. He does like the way it’s long enough to fall into Sammy’s eyes now.

“I really didn’t! It was boring as hell!” Sammy makes eye contact with Jack, silently asking for help. Jack takes pity on him, and pulls Lily by the shoulder toward him and away from Sammy.

“C’mon, it’s not like either of us did anything,” Jack reminds her. “You wrecked any chance of a healthy relationship with Mom, and I never interacted with another human being if I could help it.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lily groans, resting her head on her knee. “But you _are_ forgetting the important information that I had a summer fling and you absolutely _did not._”

Jack glares at her, a weird sort of hurt growing in the pit of his stomach. The room suddenly feels too small, and he can’t look at Sammy anymore.

“You?” Sammy raises an eyebrow. Some of the journalism students think Sammy’s really into Lily, and read their bickering as pigtail-pulling. Jack knows Sammy doesn’t like Lily like that – and _really knows _that Lily doesn’t like Sammy, but it’s still a fact he’s uncomfortably aware of as the conversation plays out. “I can’t even imagine.”

“What about you?” Lily digs an elbow into Sammy’s knee for a second. Jack keeps looking at the floor, wishing he hadn’t had any beer because he’s pretty sure he’s on the brink of throwing up. He refuses to look over at Sammy. “C’mon, I’ll tell you if you tell me. Or are you still in the Jack Wright-patented world of being gay but only really, really quietly?”

Jack’s gaze snaps to her, nausea suddenly overtaking him, and he can vaguely hear Sammy make a spluttering noise. “Lily, what the _fuck?_”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jack hears Sammy say faintly, but the idea of tearing his eyes away from Lily and to Sammy is too much to take right now.

“What?” Lily’s gaze trades between them. “Did you two fuckers really talk _every single night, _for the _entire summer, _and never mention this? I assumed you’d had like, forty heart-to-hearts by now!”

“How’d you _know_?”

Jack finally looks at Sammy. His knees are drawn up to his chest, he’s hiding behind the hair that curls around his eyes, eyes that are blown wide with terror, flickering from Lily to Jack to the kitchen to the door to the apartment. His hands shake, wrapped tightly around his beer bottle. 

“I’m sorry,” Lily, for once, actually sounds abashed. “I just – I mean, the sky is blue. Sammy’s gay. I thought they were pretty equally obvious.”

“Are you serious?” Sammy’s voice rises up an octave. Jack notices, now that he’s letting himself look at Sammy, that Sammy’s eyes never stay on Jack for longer than a millisecond before they flit somewhere else. “I – I just try so hard to hide it and – and I want a _job _someday, do I need to – to try harder or –”

_Oh. _

Jack almost feels the room freeze around him for a second.

Jack spent weeks all summer thinking about how to tell Sammy he was gay, hoping that Sammy wouldn’t hate him for it, would still be his friend, that they could still tell each other things and be close – he never thought Sammy could be agonizing about the same question.

“I’m gay, too,” Lily says, awkward and a little desperate, for once in her life asking for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. I really thought everyone knew about – both of you. And me. I thought we were all, like, totally and painfully obvious. That’s why we’re all friends, right?”

She laughs nervously for half a second before sighing, miserable. “Fuck.”

The room sits in silence, and Jack can’t take the pressure.

“Lily,” Jack unsticks his throat, and they both look over at him, Lily somewhat guiltily, Sammy with a deep and terrifying fear in his eyes that Jack thinks is probably a reflection of his own insides. “Let’s – let’s not talk about it.”

“I think I need to go,” Sammy stands up, and Jack’s throat constricts painfully when he sees how much he’s still shaking. “I – I can’t – I _can’t._”

He turns on his heel, beer bottle clattering to the ground, spilling on the wood floor. Jack barely takes note of that as Sammy casts him one last apologetic look before practically sprinting from the room.

“Well, I fucked that up,” Lily runs a hand through her tangled her, and she doesn’t make eye contact with Jack.

“No shit!” Jack doesn’t let any anger out, but despair threatens to overtake him. “You couldn’t have just asked? Or let us find a better time for that on our own?”

“I literally thought you already had! I’m not being mean or snarky!” Lily hisses under her breath even as she makes an embarrassed noise in the back of her throat. “You’ve never been close to, uh, literally anyone in your entire life, and he’s totally obviously gay, so I figured there was a correlation!”

“How – you know what, never mind, I need to chase him down,” Jack realizes a moment later that Sammy is gaining speed and Jack cannot let another second go by where they don’t talk this through.

“Go, then! Tell him I’m an asshole and I’m sorry!”

Jack sprints out the door and down the staircase, skipping three and four stairs at a time. If he twists his ankle doing it, he’s going to hate himself forever, but it saves him a few precious seconds every time.

He sees the back of Sammy’s head the second he gets out of the main door to the building, and gives thanks that he has four inches on Sammy as he tears down the street calling his name.

“Sammy! Hey! Stop!”

Sammy turns just as Jack catches up, and Jack plows into Sammy, not entirely accidentally. He knows it’s the only way he’ll have the courage to wrap his arms around Sammy’s shoulders and lean their heads together.

“Jack,” Sammy’s voice is muffled in Jack’s shoulder as they sway for a moment, both caught up in the momentum. Sammy stumbles, and that’s Jack’s cue to let go but –

But he hugged Sammy, and in almost a year of friendship, he’s never done that before. He’s patted Sammy’s shoulder, maybe his elbow or forearm, they’ve jostled together teasingly a couple times, but never a hug. Even Lily and Sammy had hugged begrudgingly once or twice.

“I didn’t know,” Jack says simply, trying not to tear up. The streets around them are mostly quiet, hardly any people out in the muggy August heat and late hour, but it still feels so intimate to say this out in the world, where anyone could hear. “I wanted to tell you – about me – I just _couldn’t._ I thought about it every night.”

Sammy’s silent for half a second, his gaze serious and steady even though Jack can see the tear tracks illuminated by the one street lamp on this side of the block. “Really? I mean – me, too. Every night. I didn’t know you were –”

“I think Lily really didn’t realize we hadn’t –” Jack twists his face in a pained expression. “She says everything she thinks. No filter.”

“Yeah,” Sammy laughs, under his breath but stronger than Jack expected it to sound. “I picked that up about Lily, funnily enough. I – um – so am I obvious? How did we land on that?”

“I’m gonna go with saying Lily’s some sort of soothsayer mind reader – or maybe we’re both just really dense,” Jack jokes and Sammy grins. “Maybe both, now that I think about it. I can’t believe I didn’t know – I was so nervous to tell you.”

“God, I had _nightmares _about telling you,” Sammy squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. “I thought you’d never want to see me again.”

“Unfortunately, I think Lily’s right about one thing,” Jack sighs ruefully as Sammy casts a curious look at him. “You’re our friend for a reason – and this is probably why.”

“Probably,” Sammy admits, almost inaudible. “I – I should come back up, huh?”

“If you want,” Jack says quickly. “I mean – Lily is probably actually going to express regret for her actions, which is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of moment.”

That makes Sammy laugh again, and Jack hugs him again before they make a move to turn around. Only for a second this time, but it’s long enough to reassure himself that Sammy likes it when Jack touches him.

_Shit, _Jack realizes the moment they break apart. _That’s why. _

They touch more, after that.

Sammy stays on their couch that night – and more nights after that, once the school year starts and they all attach themselves again. They sit closer when they watch TV, Jack pulls Sammy’s hair out of his face, Sammy rubs Jack’s shoulder when it aches, and they hug, even when they’re out in public. They hug in greeting – they hug goodbye.

(They don’t ever kiss, but – Jack’s not thinking about that. He’s gotten very, very good at not thinking about that, and he’ll only get better with time.)

It’s not like touching any other guy Jack has ever known, gay or otherwise. Not that he’s known many gay guys, but still. It’s nice, touching someone without being afraid.

**3.**

Jack does kiss Sammy, and when he does it feels like a fairytale come to life, the most beautiful fantasy tangible in his arms after so many years of repressing even the thought.

So much tension built up over so many years releasing in a single moment – nearly four years after they met. The weekend after they graduate college. Lily moved for her summer internship, it’s just the two of them alone for the summer before they’ll move, too. There’s so little time to tell Sammy, just in case he decides to leave, that Jack’s too much to deal with if he has no promise of their future, so Jack –

It’s perfect. For one single, solitary second in front of Jack’s fridge, it’s perfect. Sammy pulls away, grinning up at him with wide, surprised eyes. Jack’s sure he looks the same. He hadn’t known he was going to do it right then, but Sammy’s hair had fallen into his eyes and he’d given Jack such a shit-eating look that Jack just had to, right now, or he’d lose his nerve forever.

Jack doesn’t think any moment could ever be better.

He’s wrong, but two weeks later as they lay on opposite sides of the bed, Jack can’t help but think they probably used up all of their luck on that single second in time and left none for the future.

Everything since then has felt distinctly less like a fairytale, and more like a parade of endlessly awkward apologies.

“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” Jack breaks the silence by asking for the third fucking time. Sammy’s turned toward him, but his eyes are closed, his head somewhat buried in the covers. He looks so sweet, and Jack just wants to kiss him but knows he’ll probably find a way to fuck that up, too.

“Jack, I swear I’m totally fine,” Sammy says, slow and purposeful, lifting his head up to grimace at Jack. “Don’t freak out, it was just – you know, weird again.”

This is the third time they’ve had sex. Though there have been improvements since the first, it’s hard to have good sex when you’re too busy apologizing every ten seconds for your general existence.

“I think the making out part at the beginning went okay,” Jack says, because that had actually been mostly enjoyable. Compared to the first time, at least, where Jack’s pretty sure he stopped being able to do anything properly when he realized that Sammy’s tongue was in his mouth.

Sammy cringes at him, and Jack winces apologetically. “Okay. So the making out part _didn’t _go okay. That’s fine. We’ll – try again.”

“Your giant nose keeps getting in my way,” Sammy smiles and makes a swiping motion at his face. Jack freezes up, and shifts back toward his own side of the bed. Sammy’s smile disappears. “Oh. Shit. Are you insecure about that? I didn’t mean that the way it probably sounded. I mean, you know I think you’re – that – _shit_.”

Sammy takes Jack’s hand across the bed and squeezes. Jack turns his head into his pillow so that Sammy can’t see him blush.

“It’s okay,” Jack mumbles, still keeping his eyes obscured from Sammy’s line of sight. “My nose is, proportionally, too big for my face.”

“Well, not everything about you can be perfect, Jack. Gives you character.”

Jack sighs, wanting to move closer to Sammy but not sure how to ask. He shouldn’t overthink, he should just do, but –

“They should make a guide,” Jack says definitively, “about how to have sex with your best friend.”

Sammy snorts under his breath. “That would probably be all about friends with benefits. How not to catch feelings and all that.”

“I think we’re far too late on the catching feelings front,” Jack agrees, and shifts a little closer to Sammy. They’re still holding hands, so that’s night. He rubs his thumb across Sammy’s palm.

“That’s how I know we’re going to be fine,” Sammy says after a beat, and Jack makes a noise to show he’s listening. The bed creaks, and Jack feels Sammy bridge the distance between them, no longer insurmountable, to fit his head against Jack’s shoulder. “The feelings aren’t gonna go away just because we’re having the most awkward transition period of all time.”

“It’s only been a week,” Jack points out, as they both do when things look grim.

“Exactly,” Sammy’s lips brush against Jack’s bare shoulder for half a second before he says, voice nearly hushed, “I’m still gonna be in love with you next week. We’ve got time to figure it out.”

Jack leans down to kiss the top of Sammy’s forehead, because at least he can do that properly. Sammy sighs against him, and Jack slides his arm out from between them so he can pull Sammy into his chest.

They can do this part alright.

The problem, Jack reflects while Sammy sleeps, is that they’ve both spent so long repressing everything even resembling an emotion, and never acting on what they feel. There’s no switch to flip for two lifetimes worth of shame and embarrassment.

The only thing that Jack _knows _they’re getting right is that in spite of it all, neither of them want to spend a single second apart.

Jack works early shifts as an assistant at the local radio station, and Sammy works a nine to five desk job at an advertising company. Jack naps while Sammy’s finishing his workday, and Sammy will come home the second he’s done to wake Jack up. They’ll usually stay in bed, and then make dinner, and then watch TV, and then inevitably try to have disastrous sex but –

They still fall asleep in the same bed every night, chest to chest. Sammy sleeps in layers, even during the summer, and Jack can’t relate but also loves that Sammy sleeps in Jack’s sweatshirts now.

“You can go back to your apartment some nights if you want,” Jack tells Sammy a couple weeks in as they make dinner, ducking around each other in the kitchen. “I won’t be offended if you want a night away.”

“We’re doing okay,” Sammy grins at him, biting his lip and turning just pink enough that Jack knows he’s telling the truth. “Besides, I don’t want to go. That would mean I’m not with you.”

“That’s generally what going means, yeah,” Jack sets down the frying pan he’d gotten out of his cupboard to wrap his hand around Sammy’s wrist and pull him closer. Sammy rolls his eyes, but he lets Jack seduce him away from the importance work of the various vegetables on the cutting board. “I just – if you ever wanna get away from me, I totally get it. I’m not that easy to live with –”

“Shut up about my boyfriend,” Sammy leans into him, pressing their hips together. It’s a bold move for someone who’s turned beet red and isn’t quite making eye contact. “And you’re actually _very _easy to live with. I like being around you, all the time. I don’t know to touch you sometimes – but I always know how to talk to you. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it does,” Jack’s heart constricts with emotion at his chest. He tries not to get choked up as Sammy leans in to press a kiss to his collarbone, and brings his hand up to rest at the base of Sammy’s neck. “I think maybe that’s why it was hard to kiss you at first? If I’m kissing you, then I can’t be talking to you. And I always want to talk to you, more than anything.”

Sammy smiles against Jack’s shoulder. “Sap.”

“You, too,” Jack nudges him back.

“Even if we never get any better at this, we can just be that old straight couple on 50s TV shows that had to read magazines on opposite sides of the bed and couldn’t touch or they’d have to make the rating higher,” Sammy teases, clearly a joke.

Jack can’t take it like a joke when he spends most nights after Sammy falls asleep, wondering and hoping they’ll still be together when they’re eighty.

“I think we’ll get better,” Jack kisses him, hoping that Sammy will be too distracted to notice just how sappy Jack really is in the confines of his own mind.

**4.**

Their first summer is the easiest. They have the time and space to learn to fit within each other’s grooves before the real world infringes. And the sex does, thankfully, get better. Jack discovers Sammy’s utterly useless when someone pulls his hair, and everything falls into place much more easily after that.

It’s a solid enough foundation of a relationship that moving to Tampa to be with Lily doesn’t hurt them. It’s stressful, and too much sometimes, especially once they actually get jobs at the local radio station.

The desk jobs turn into their own show less than a year later. That makes it easier and harder all at once. Sammy and Jack are very different in public than in private, obviously – but having a nationally syndicated radio show makes them all the more nervous to even brush shoulders at work.

It’s manageable, though. They go home together at the end of the day and Sammy makes dinner, Jack does the dishes, they curl up and talk about anything they can imagine. Jack rambles on about the latest book he’s reading, Sammy bitches about whoever he’s got a grudge against at work this week, and it _works. _

The worst part is figuring out how to tell Lily. Neither of them have any clue.

Jack had planned on ripping the Band-Aid off when they first arrived in Tampa, the first time they were alone together. He and Sammy had moved in together, which hadn’t been the plan at first. Lily doesn’t mind having a studio to herself, she said, she does best on her own, but that doesn’t stop her from giving Jack a long, judgmental look when he stops by her apartment to help her move a new couch.

“So you and Sammy live together now,” Lily says in a tone like she already knows, and disapproves immensely. Jack struggles to breathe, sitting down on the newly positioned couch. “That’s brave of him.”

“Shut up,” Jack deflates slightly, hoping that she’s just teasing instead of actually knowing something. He wants to be able to tell her.

“And neither of you have a boyfriend right now,” Lily says, and Jack breathes a sigh of relief that’s short-lived, because obviously insinuations are being made right now. “You should be careful.”

“About….what?” Jack swallows, trying to find something else in the room to look at. He settles on Lily’s dog, locked in his kennel during the furniture organizing, panting and wagging his tiny tail.

“You know,” Lily shrugs, and she sits next to him on the couch, jostling him with her shoulder. “You guys are way too similar for that to end in anything but tears.”

“Similar?” Jack’s too surprised to be angry. He’s sure the anger will come later. “We’re really not.”

“You’re ambitious and driven, a little lonely, the same kind of obnoxious…” Lily trails off, smiling. “And repressed. Can’t forget that one. That one’s pretty important when it comes to….well, however you guys describe your weird flirty friendship. That’s gotten even flirtier recently, I might add.”

“Whatever,” Jack hopes his annoyance is tangible to Lily. “I don’t need your input about me and Sammy, Lily.”

“I’m just saying, the three of us have something good going,” Lily says. “Don’t ruin it by getting your messy feelings everywhere.”

“Feelings aren’t a bad thing.”

“Says the guy who dated a girl for two years in high school because she didn’t want to make him want to die instantly.”

“That’s a low blow,” Jack snaps without meaning to, but Lily deserves it for dragging high school into this. “I’m an adult, and so is Sammy, and if we want to – you know, _do _anything, we don’t need your permission.”

Lily barely reacts, only shrugs. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Her words still follow Jack, even though he doesn’t mention them to Sammy. There’s no reason to stress him out or make him nervous. Sammy’s already naturally nervous enough without anyone putting any pressure on him, and Lily is all about the most uncomfortable sorts of pressure.

She doesn’t bring it up around him, thank God. The show’s syndication is stressful enough when it eventually happens, and even though it’s an amazing success that they’ve always wanted, it manages to make Sammy even more closed-off and anxious than usual, even at home.

“Hey, baby?” Jack literally has to stand in front of Sammy one night to stop him pacing. “I need you here when we’re at home, okay?”

“I know,” Sammy stops short, wincing even as Jack takes his hands. “I just can’t get out of my own head right now. Jesus, I – I’m so bad at this. And being – being with you, I don’t understand why –”

“Shut up about my boyfriend,” Jack threatens lightly, even as he has to blink back tears at the look of despair on Sammy’s face. “You’re the one who’s way too good for me, okay?”

Sammy makes a noise like he can’t possibly believe that, but Jack knows it’s true. Sammy’s anxiety always threatens to get the better of him, and he’s so afraid, all the time – but Jack is, too. And Sammy’s the one who makes him want to be less afraid.

Sammy’s still wound so tightly at work the next week that Jack plans a little speech to interrupt a boring segment to show Sammy how much he cares.

Jack can’t touch Sammy when they’re at work – but he can talk to him. He can say what he feels as long as there’s a veneer, a plausible deniability, an optimistic rabble-rousing speech for an audience outside him.

It’s always for Sammy, just like everything Jack does.

**5.**

The one thing Jack has to say about LA in that the divide between home and work is much, much clearer.

At home, everything is perfect. They have a house, a genuine-honest-to-God little suburban house in a cul-de-sac. They have a yard, and a garden where Jack tries so hard not to kill anything and succeeds almost all of the time. They have a fish tank. Jack has a home office. There’s adoption paperwork buried in one of his files, for a couple years down the road.

There’s a guest bedroom they’ve never used but –

Everything else is good. Sometimes they even hold hands when they go hiking, or when they’re on a secluded corner of the beach. They go grocery shopping together, and cook together most nights. Jack does the dishes, Sammy does the laundry.

They are wonderfully, painfully domestic. Sammy cooks dinner and Jack hooks his chin on his shoulder and watches and Jack tells him _you’re all I’ve ever dreamed of. _

Work doesn’t ruin how perfect their house is. If anything, it makes the perfection all the more beautiful, because they both know that it’s temporary and the next morning they’ll be suffocating in bad cologne and misogyny and the most toxic form of heterosexuality known to man.

Jack thinks that the only reason they both cope as well as they do is that they learned how to repress everything so young, and it still comes naturally to them. It’s easy to compartmentalize, pretend the two are separate with no bleeding over.

It’s not as if they have a choice in the matter. They’d have to quit their jobs to be out, and neither of them is quite ready to make that jump yet.

Someday, they’ve talked about it, but not yet. They need enough money and clout to live on. Besides, they’ve always been ambitious. Driven. That’s what brought them together in the first place. The desire to find success one day.

This is what success looks like. A house in LA, shiny new cars, expensive sunglasses, wild parties.

Jack still dreams of missions to the bottom of the sea. A submarine with just the two of them, discovering the secrets of the universe. Lily’s in the dream, with a few other nameless figures who understand.

Sammy’s all Jack has, and that’s more than enough. Jack doesn’t want to be selfish, wish for more than he’s due.

He never imagined he could be successful in a relationship with anyone, but he and Sammy spend eight years together before Jack realizes it’s time to ask a question he’d never even dreamed of in his wildest fantasies.

Jack surprises Sammy with a weekend trip to the Redwoods. He and Sammy take vacations every Christmas, mostly to other countries, where they can hold hands without a second glance, lost in the anonymity. They don’t go away for the weekend often, because their show runs Saturday Nights. There’s one weekend the station reruns only, and Jack insists, ring heavy in his pocket.

It takes a while for Sammy to warm up to Jack holding his hand anywhere outside the car, but there’s a sense of isolation once they get up into the forest. Not the same anonymity as a big city in a foreign country, but being dwarfed by nature. Nothing they do can matter in the face of a forest that spans so much space.

“You’re really affectionate right now,” Sammy laughs, clearly a little nervous but getting used to it, as he laces his fingers with Jack’s. They sit alone on the edge of a rock, and Jack puts his head on Sammy’s shoulder as they stare up at the trees covering the sky from view with their monstrous branches.

“It’s been a hard month,” Jack says, the thought twisting his smile into a frown. Things had been bleeding lately into their perfect house. Sammy had been more irritable, Jack had been pulling away. He doesn’t want that to keep happening. He doesn’t want them to become too complacent with what they have.

“Hard year,” Sammy says quietly, and his head comes to rest on Jack’s. “I’m sorry. I’ll – _we’ll _do better. Maybe it’s time to – to do something different.”

“Different like what?” Jack asks, heart beating in his chest but he doesn’t think he’s nervous. Not for this. He’s just suddenly aware of how alive he is, how every moment of his life led up to this exact instant, that all the horrible moments that came before existed so that Jack could reach this precipice.

“New job? No job? New city?” Sammy shrugs, biting his lip hard enough that Jack can see the crease. “I don’t know. I just think – we’ve been doing this long enough. It’s time for something to change.”

“Maybe,” Jack sits up straight, reaching into his jacket pocket, knowing now is the right time, “maybe you’d want to marry me, then?”

Sammy stares at him, eyes blown wide, for all of ten seconds. Jack stares between Sammy and the ring box clutched in his finger. Maybe Sammy doesn’t like it. Jack tried so hard to find something that wasn’t feminine or gaudy but didn’t look too much like a wedding band, something simple but still an engagement ring –

Sammy leans in and kisses him. Jack realizes somewhat belatedly that he thinks it’s the first time they’ve ever kissed without four walls surrounding them, but Sammy doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

Jack kisses back.

**6.**

Jack won’t think about when things went blurry.

He’s not sure how long it was, or even when – Christmas? It might’ve been Christmas. They hadn’t taken a trip that year because Jack had been in the – in the hospital. Dehydration. He hadn’t – hadn’t eaten –

He remembers flinching, when Sammy reached out to touch him. It felt like burning. An awful, painful burning because Sammy was in this world and not the other one, the one Jack was so close to without realizing –

He would push Sammy away, figuratively and literally, _shove _him across the room. He would shout himself hoarse, _we wanted a change, why not this? Why not King Falls? Why won’t you believe me? Come with me?_

_The change I wanted isn’t losing you, _Sammy tried to cup Jack’s face, and everything erupted in flames.

He remembers Sammy sobbing in the next room. He remembers wanting to go to him, but it’s only a dimness in the back of his mind. He can’t act on it. He’s not in control of his own body. Everything hurts so badly, all the time, and Sammy doesn’t understand that every time he reaches out, he makes Jack’s insides twist.

What he remembers most clearly is calling Sammy’s name in the driveway that should be bright but is dark instead. His throat closes up, and he knows Sammy can’t hear him anymore.

**7.**

It’s still blurry in the hospital.

Blurry, but relentlessly and incredibly _bright._

It’s as wonderful as it is terrifying – Jack thought darkness would be the only thing he’d ever see again. That he’d drown it before ever escaping it.

The brightness is the only thing he can process for a long time. His mind is still fuzzy, and images blur in and out of his line of sight. What he thinks is his line of sight. What he _hopes _is his line of sight because that means that not only is he alive, but he can _see. _

Beyond that, Jack has very little conceptualization of _who _he is, let alone where he is. He can’t focus on any details for too long or the pain starts to overwhelm him.

He knows when someone touches him, cups his face tenderly and kisses his forehead. He knows when someone takes a tight grip of his hand and draws circles. He knows when someone presses a hand against his chest to feel his heart.

He doesn’t know anything else, but he leans into the touch. When was the last time someone touched him at all, let alone with such tenderness?

He sees blurry faces later – _Sammy, Lily – _but he can’t make out the details. Can’t call for them, can’t say he’s sorry, can’t –

Jack isn’t sure how long it takes before he’s lucid, but he blinks himself awake to the sound of beeping machinery and the feeling of something pressed against his shoulder. He knows exactly who he is, and what the hospital room must mean.

It’s over.

It takes Jack several minutes to actually open his eyes, but when he does the brightness isn’t nearly as overwhelming as the scene in front of him.

Lily, snoring softly from the chair next to the bed he’s laid up in. Her head is resting on Jack’s knee, cheek smashed against him. It can’t be comfortable. Her hair is longer, wild and untamed and shrouding most of her face from view. He thinks she’s drooling. Classic Lily.

And Sammy – Sammy is the pressure on his shoulder. Jack’s hospital bed is filled with wires and IVs and a gaunt, too thin Sammy taking up a quarter of the room, nearly falling off the other side of the bed. His face is in Jack’s neck, and the quiet steadiness of his breath tells Jack he’s asleep, too. His hair is even messier than Lily’s, and longer, too – well past his shoulders. Day old stubble, Jack recognizes right away. His hand curled in Jack’s hospital gown on his chest. Feeling for his heartbeat.

Jack makes a choked noise without meaning to, and he hears a clattering noise from the other side of the room.

“You’re awake!” A voice whispers, though it’s as close as a whisper can come to a shout. Jack turns away from Sammy to see a young man he hadn’t noticed before standing in the doorway, but now rushing toward Jack’s bed. He’s short with a curly mop top and big glasses. Jack isn’t sure if he’s supposed to recognize the guy or not.

The guy stares at him, eyes blown wide with what Jack thinks is excitement – he isn’t sure how good he is at reading people, especially now.

“Where am I?” Jack asks, quiet, careful not to jostle either of the forms sleeping on him.

“King Falls,” the guy says, quick enough to be a single syllable. “Well, Big Pine, technically. Nearest hospital.”

“I made it here after all,” Jack wonders out loud, matching the guy’s whisper. “What – what happened to – that place? Where I was?”

“We’re not sure yet,” the guy bites down hard on his lip. “We got a few people out but definitely not everybody. It was a rift, not the whole thing. I – I grabbed your hand, I don’t know if you remember –”

_A swirling shadow, a sickening crunch, someone shouting his name – _

“Ben,” Jack says slowly, unsure but somehow also _certain_, and the guy’s mouth falls open.

“How –”

“I have no idea,” Jack whispers, sure now that he was right. He can’t think about why that might be, only that he reached out and this guy, this guy he doesn’t even know, was _there, _yelling for him.

“Sammy would’ve,” Ben says quickly. “Lily, too. If they – it was complicated. We got separated. I wanted so badly to find you –”

“Who are you?” Jack interrupts, an awful nausea passing through him at spending any time dwelling on that place.

“Ben Arnold,” Ben says quickly. “I’d shake your hand, but – well. Um. I’m Sammy’s best friend. I’ve wanted to meet you so badly for so long – I can’t believe you’re really here.”

“Me neither,” Jack says, not quite processing the rest right now. His head hurts too badly. He turns to Sammy, still asleep in the crook of his shoulder. He must be exhausted. “He must – you guys must – live here?”

“I’m a local,” Ben nods. “Sammy’s been here for nearly five years now – looking for you. Lily’s been here for about three? I’m Lily’s friend, too – well. She’s begrudgingly allowed me to call her my friend on a temporary trial basis.”

“Sounds like my sister,” Jack blinks back tears again.

“They both live with me – I’ve been trying to take really good care of them, but – they both missed you so much,” Ben, apparently, is a real talker if the words spilling out of him as if involuntarily is anything to go by. “I hope I did right. My apartment is sort of decommissioned right now – when you’re out the hospital, you can come stay at my mom’s. Sammy’s been in my childhood bedroom for like three months now, he keeps finding new things to embarrass me with. So you can stay here. Lily’s staying with Emily – that’s my girlfriend –”

“Ben, can you, um. Slow down, I think –”

“I’m overwhelming you,” Ben’s eyes grow approximately ten sizes. “I’m sorry. I’m just so happy.”

Before Jack knows what’s happening, Ben’s hugging him. Well, hugging Jack’s head and shoulder, at the very least. He’s short, so it sort of works. Jack can tell he’s the tactile type. He can tell Ben really cares about him, though – which, because he’s never met Jack, must mean he really cares about Sammy and Lily.

Jack tries to hug back, but he can really only use one arm without causing Sammy to fall off the other side of the bed.

He doesn’t succeed in not moving Sammy, though, because Sammy stirs a moment later. He blinks up at Jack, eyes heavy at first before growing wide with an emotion Jack can readily identify as joy.

“Hi,” Sammy whispers, staring up into Jack’s eyes like they’ve never seen each other before. Well, it’s been five years. That’s a long time to go.

Holy shit, it’s been five years. It’s been five years and Sammy is _here, _in Jack’s hospital bed, sleeping next to him like nothing and everything has changed.

“Hi,” Jack whispers back, lost for any words that could explain the rush of emotion inside his chest.

Sammy reaches across Jack with his other hand. Jack’s momentarily confused about what he’s doing until he realizes that Ben’s grasped Sammy’s hand just on top of Jack’s leg, and they’re both squeezing tight enough to cut off oxygen flow.

“You’re both here,” Sammy whispers, and Jack realizes that Sammy is sobbing maybe a second after he starts, his whole body shuddering against Jack’s. “You’re both here at the same time.”

Jack doesn’t understand much right now – but what he does grasp is how monumental it is for Sammy. Jack and Ben. At the same time.

Jack feels himself tip off a precipice, and his head starts swimming again. All he knows for certain as his lucidity slips away is that whoever Ben Arnold is, Jack’s going to do his absolute best to love him as much as Sammy clearly does.

**8.**

Loving Ben turns out to be extremely easy almost right away. Sammy and Lily worriedly and lovingly deposit Jack in Ben’s childhood bedroom and he asks _is that a hand-drawn Mothman on your wall? _

From that moment on, Jack’s decided Ben’s the best person who ever existed in the entire world. Saving Jack was just the start to how great Ben is.

Ben is, as Jack could’ve guessed, also the most tactile person who ever existed in the entire world. He’s has more boundaries with Jack, probably only because Jack can’t stand up for more than a minute without his legs giving out.

With Sammy – and even Lily of all people – Ben is like a human suction cup. He’s always reaching out and latching on and attaching himself to their sides. Sammy will sigh, put an arm around Ben, and ruffle his hair. Lily will stomp on Ben’s feet and make him cry but in a way that reminds Jack of when the two of them were kids and Lily bullied him relentlessly.

“I’m glad you guys found a fun new updated version of me,” Jack jokes on maybe his third day out of the hospital, and Sammy and Lily both look scandalized as they reassure him no one could ever replace him in their lives.

Jack let them do it, holding in a laugh. He was just happy to be here now. Any jealousy he felt was over the fact that they got to have a life here, in King Falls, with Ben and the rest of the town, that he didn’t get to be a part of.

The rest of the town, as far as Jack can tell, is just as lovely as Ben, if not as energetic. He only meets Emily, Troy, and Ben’s mom Betty, but if they’re any indication, Jack’s sure everyone else is going to be just fine.

Emily kisses Jack’s cheek the first time they meet, in the hospital, and tells him through tears how glad she is to meet him, and she hopes they’ll be great friends someday. Troy is the one who drives Jack from the hospital, wringing Jack’s hand enthusiastically as he says he’s heard so many wonderful things about him.

Betty just takes care of him, no questions asked. And also tells him stories about Ben’s childhood at Sammy’s behest that make Sammy cackle and Ben groan and go hide in another room.

The new people aren’t nearly as much of an adjustment as Sammy and Lily, though. They’ve gone from not being able to stand in the same room without a screaming match to sleeping curled up against each of his sides. They both worry incessantly whenever Jack wants to do anything that involves standing up. They’re tag-teaming the effort to be a caretaker.

It would be almost funny if Jack wasn’t so grateful. And also sometimes annoyed, because he’s not an invalid even if sometimes his mind slips and he forgets where he is.

That only happens a couple times a day now, but it’s enough that Sammy and Lily keep a tight hold on him.

Especially Sammy. Jack doesn’t think Sammy’s let go of his hand once since he woke up for more than a few minutes at a time. Jack’s gotten used to eating one-handed.

It’s a change, from before. A welcome change, but a little jarring nonetheless. Jack thinks Sammy’s going to keep doing it, even once they start going out in the world outside of Betty’s little house.

Jack doesn’t quite realize how tactile he and Sammy have become until Ben says when they’re watching TV one night and Emily and Lily have already fallen asleep, “You know, you guys can kiss in front of us.”

Jack feels his face involuntarily twist in mild disgust, and sees Sammy’s face do the same out of the corner of his eye.

“Just because you and Emily are exhibitionists –” Sammy begins with a heavy roll of his eyes, lacing his fingers with Jack’s even more tightly as if looking for support.

“You keep your dirty Emily jokes to yourself!” Ben jabs a finger in Sammy’s direction. “I’m just _saying, _you don’t have to feel like you have to hide anything.”

From what Jack’s gleaned in his month back in the world, Sammy hadn’t told anyone about Jack for a long time, because he was so afraid and ashamed. Jack understands, and doesn’t blame him for it even though Sammy clearly still does.

However, since figuring it out, it seems as though Ben’s been dragging Sammy from the closet with all his might. It’s a little daunting for Jack, who has only ever known the closet, to suddenly be thrust into a world where everyone knows without Jack saying a single word.

He thinks he’ll appreciate it someday, but for now it just makes his skin crawl with nerves. Hopefully Sammy can help him get through it, since he’s already been there.

“Believe it or not, we can just not make out in front of you because that’s gross and we don’t want you to see that,” Sammy says dryly. “I’m not gonna stop being repressed just because Jack’s here. And don’t recruit him to your cause, he’s just as repressed as I am. Maybe more. He dated a girl for two years –”

“Must we bring Lindy into every single time we have a discussion about my repression?” Jack sighs, not annoyed but a little put out that someone new knows about anything he did when he was sixteen. “Ben, kissing in front of other people is gross. We’re holding hands!”

He lifts up his and Sammy’s conjoined fingers so Ben can see, and Ben smiles a little abashedly.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Ben says. “I just want you guys to know that we love you, and you can be like, just as gross as me and Emily if you want to be.”

“No one in the entire world is as gross as you and Emily, so –”

Jack does have let go of Sammy’s hand, since Ben launches himself from the chair to couch to tackle Sammy to the ground, but they’re all laughing within seconds.

**9.**

Troy throws a dinner party three months after Jack’s let out of the hospital.

“To celebrate,” Troy says earnestly when he calls to ask for permission, “and so you can meet everyone.”

Jack tentatively agrees, with the promise that Sammy and Ben can vet the guest list. He’s met more than a few members of the town now –Mary and Tim, Hershel, and Ron have all stopped by at Sammy’s invitation – but a party seems a little intimidating.

It remains a little intimidating, and Sammy’s clearly nervous if the way he keeps redoing his ponytail is anything to go by. Ben is an overly social person, though, so his enthusiasm makes up for Sammy’s anxiety.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Emily tells him on their way out of the house.

“Jack likes parties,” Lily says as she pats Jack’s shoulder elbow mildly. She leans in to rest her head on his arm for a second.

“Maybe less so now,” Jack says. He’s trying his best to remember the person he used to be, and he thinks he’s still mostly the same. But there are some wholesale changes. That’s okay, though. Sammy and Lily have changed, too. They’re all different people, but they still fit together like they did when they were teenagers.

Probably even better than when they were teenagers. So much of who they are now is made up of each other.

“Everyone coming is really nice, and wants to meet you,” Emily reassures him. “I mean, Archie probably wants to thirst after you, but it’s very harmless.”

Jack laughs because it’s a joke, though his anxiety is through the roof. Hopefully he stays completely lucid tonight. He’s been getting better every day, but when he slips, there’s not much he can do to stop himself from going under.

The party actually turns out to be quite pleasant. There’s less than twenty people there, and Sammy can pull Jack through the room to meet new people so that he’s not stuck in any one conversation for long. He actually ends up enjoying himself, and he can tell Sammy does, too.

Sammy gets more relaxed as the night goes on. He’d started out the evening holding Jack’s hand, but by the time he’s had three drinks in him, he’s leaning on Jack’s shoulder, too.

“M’sleepy,” Sammy says to Jack midway through a conversation with Ron Begley about the fishing season. Ron barks out a laugh that Sammy doesn’t seem to hear as he molds even more completely against Jack’s side.

“You know, I’ve never seen him happier,” Ron says to Jack, eyes twinkling with affection. “I remember when I first came out– I was so afraid. But I think now I understand why I did it, even though it scared the shit out of me. It was so Sammy could be this happy right now. And you, of course. No one in the whole world deserves a night like this more.”

“You know what?” Jack realizes as he speaks, squeezing Sammy’s hand as he looks Ron in the eye. Ron has a fierce kind of pride about him that Jack admires immensely, and hopes he can muster half of someday. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier either.”

“It’s amazing what a supportive community can do to a person,” Ron says, a warm smile on his lips. “But it’s equally as amazing what being in love with a good man can do to a person, too.”

Ron claps Jack on the back and moves past him. Jack unwittingly blinks back a couple of tears.

“Jack?” Sammy murmurs quietly enough that he can only make it out because he’s so close to Jack’s ear. “Home? Find Ben?”

“Find Ben,” Jack agrees, and kisses the side of Sammy’s head, not caring if anyone sees.

**10.**

It’s a bit weird, kissing in front of a crowd of people who are all watching you, and then they clap as if you’ve made some sort of monumental achievement. Jack thinks it would be weird for anyone, not just him. Ben and Emily’s _first kiss _had been in front of a crowd who burst into applause, which is a bit too wild for Jack to conceive.

Still, it’s a necessary part of a wedding, and Jack’s already kissed Sammy thousands of times in the privacy of four walls surrounding them. Probably time for something a bit different.

Kissing in front of a crowd isn’t something Jack wants to do every day, but when he says _I do _and Sammy cups his cheeks, tears welling up in his eyes –

Well, it feels pretty monumental. 


End file.
